The Wonder Years

This article is about The Wonder Years (pop-punk band). For other uses, go somewhere else. I’ve never watched the TV show.

In twelve days, I get paid. In thirteen, I’ll be picking up the new album by my favourite band by a mile right now.

Metal might be more skilled, pop might be more refined, alternative might be the most ridiculously broad term for a music genre I’ve ever heard, but pop punk is just, happy. It makes me feel happy, feel epic, all the emotions. Isn’t that the point?

The start of university, round about four years ago, Mr Ryan of Flat 2 (full name) gave me a bunch of albums by The Wonder Years, one of his favourite bands (I assume). Being a pop-punk kid as it is, it took me right back to bands like Green Day and blink 182, Sum 41 and Good Charlotte, Fall Out Boy and Paramore, the bands coming up in the 90s and 00s when the genre exploded.

Since then, FOB and Paramore have leaned more towards pop than pop punk (absolutely not a complaint, their new albums rank among their best to me), blink have imploded twice, and in general the whole genre has waned in the ‘mainstream’. There haven’t been a lot of records that style of pop punk released in the last few years to a big reception, to my knowledge.

Again, not a bad thing. I’m not one of those people who think because a band sign to a major label and make some money they’ve ‘sold out’ or ‘gone mainstream’. Those bands’ early stuff mostly sounded like it could have been recorded on a budget, in a basement, with a grapefruit.

It’s always nice to hear bands like Neck Deep and PVRIS getting some good Radio 1 airtime, for me though TWY are the yardstick for pop punk right now.

If you’ve never listened to them and like pop punk kinds of bands, or if you just fancy a listen to them, I’ll put a range of vids in here for you all to enjoy. I would just say that if you like the ones on here, chances are you’ll like ’em all. ALL credit for these videos go to Hopeless Records, who have a hell of a lot of top bands signed to them by the way.

Soupy (singer) is THE most passionate, emotional voice on my iPod. Lyrically, they are streets ahead of any band I currently listen to, across all genres, so many songs are so moving and so powerful. The three new songs they’ve released so far are amazing. Cardinals and Cigarettes & Saints are the type I just referred to, only they’ve tightened up their sound even more since their last album.

I Don’t Like Who I Was Then is, as I tweeted as soon as I heard it, VINTAGE, WONDER YEARS. I didn’t do it in quite the Michael Cole voice I wanted, but I was too excited by new music to think about wrestling commentators.

Pop punk has been hibernating for the last decade or so, but with No Closer To Heaven coming out September 4th, Neck Deep getting all kinds of recognition, fingers crossed it’s on its way back to the spotlight. I just hope I haven’t overplayed these three singles by the time the album drops.